Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

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Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon won the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation in 2001, beating Chicken Run, the three-part TV Dune, X-Men and Frequency in that order. (The only one of those I had previously seen was Chicken Run.) It was also top of the nominations ballot.

It also won the 2001 Nebula for Best Script, beating X-Men again, also O Brother, Where Art Thou? (which I started but could not finish, and is surely only barely genre) and the Buffy episode "The Body" (which I have of course seen, and would rate as one of the best-written Buffy episodes, if emotionally very gruelling). It also won four Oscars, the same as Terminator 2 and Raiders of the Lost Ark, though two less than Star Wars. IMDB users rank it 15th and 42nd on the two systems, which is rather low for a Hugo and Nebula winner.

I normally start these reviews by looking at actors who have been in other Hugo or Nebula or Oscar winners, or in Doctor Who, but in this case there aren't any. (Not even any crossovers with The Last Emperor.) One of the leads is Michelle Yeoh, who I have only recently discovered from Star Trek: Discovery and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.

It's a straightforward story in the wuxia tradition, involving a stolen sword and a forbidden love affair. The entire film is in Mandarin (which apparently was not easy for Michelle Yeoh or Chow Yun-Fat, both of whom are much more comfortable in Cantonese), but once I got my subtitles sorted out it was no problem. In terms of the script alone, I think Buffy was robbed of the Nebula; but what makes the film simply superb are the action sequences. Three of these really stood out for me: the early rooftop sequence where Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh) pursues the masked Jen Yu / Yu Xialong (Zhang Ziyi), who has just stolen the Green Destiny Sword, across the rooftops:

Later on they confront each other again – an incredible scene, in which the actresses performed all the fighting themselves and the only special effects are that the lines holding them up in the flying scenes have been edited out:

This is immediately followed by the amazing bamboo forest scene where Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun-Fat) pursues Jen to try and get the sword off her (and avenge her hurt to Shu Lien):

The whole thing looks and sounds fantastic; I have no idea how accurate it's trying to be to any historical period of China (certainly trying less hard than The Last Emperor, or Shang-Chi for that matter) but I don't really care – this is a fully imagined world in which real characters are dealing with both fantasy quests and real-people problems (at which point I should also shout out to the fourth lead, Chang Chen playing bad boy Lo "Dark Cloud" Xiao Hou).

I must say I loved it; as previously noted, I have not seen many films from 2000, but I think this is my favourite. It's going in my top ten Hugo and Nebula winners, maybe just behind Galaxy Quest but ahead of Contact. I don't think we've had a Hugo or Nebula winning film before that was actually about non-white people, certainly none in a language other than English, and there have been very few that put women as centrally as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (just Alien, Aliens and Contact, I think).

The film is based on the fourth book of the five-volume wuxia Crane Iron saga by Wang Dulu. Michelle Yeoh has summarised it and the rest of the series on her own website. Unfortunately it has not been translated into English, so I have not read it, but for the record, the second paragraph of the third chapter is:

劉泰保答應了一聲，便出屋同著得祿走出街門。得祿愁眉不展地說：「您今天鬧的這是什麼事？若不是有貝勒爺替你說話，玉大人一定要重辦你！」劉泰保笑著說：「沒有貝勒爺當後臺，我也不敢這麼辦。」

This is my 40th Hugo and/or Nebula winning film. (I have been skipping non-cinematic winners of either award.) My definitive and unchallengable ranking follows, with the most recent ten in red – it's been a good run starting with The Princess Bride, with just one real clunker and the other nine in my top 75%, six in my top 50% and four in my top 25%.

40) The Canterville Ghost (Retro Short, 1945)
39) Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (Retro Short, 1944)
38) Curse of the Cat People (Retro Short, 1945)
37) The Sixth Sense (Nebula, 1999)
36) Heaven Can Wait (Retro Long, 1944)
35) The Incredible Shrinking Man (Outstanding Movie, 1958)
34) A Boy and His Dog (1976)
33) Pinocchio (Retro Short Form, 1941)
32) Destination Moon (Retro, 1951)
31) Slaughterhouse-Five (1973)
30) The War of the Worlds (Retro, 1954)
29) Sleeper (Hugo/Nebula 1974)
28) The Princess Bride (1987)
27) 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984)
26) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1990)
25) Fantasia (Retro Long Form, 1941)
24) Return of the Jedi (1982)
23) Edward Scissorhands (1990)
22) Bambi (Retro, 1943)
21) Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)		 20) Young Frankenstein (Hugo/Nebula 1975)
19) Soylent Green (Nebula 1973)
18) The Picture of Dorian Gray (Retro, 1946)
17) The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
16) The Truman Show (1998)
15) Aliens (1986)
14) Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
13) Dr Strangelove (1965)
12) Jurassic Park (1993)
11) A Clockwork Orange (1972)
10) Superman (1978)
9) Contact (1997)
8) Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Hugo/Nebula 2001)
7) Galaxy Quest (Hugo/Nebula 2000)
6) Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)
5) Blade Runner (1983)
4) Back to the Future (1985)
3) 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
2) Star Wars (Hugo/Nebula 1978/77)
1) Alien (1979)

Next up is The Fellowship of the Ring.

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October 2013 books

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This is the latest post in a series I started in late 2019, anticipating the twentieth anniversary of my bookblogging which will fall in 2023 Every six-ish days, I've been revisiting a month from my recent past, noting work and family developments as well as the books I read in that month. I've found it a pleasantly cathartic process, especially in recent circumstances. If you want to look back at previous entries, they are all tagged under bookblog nostalgia. Today we reach exactly the half-way point – 120 posts down, 120 to go.

The month started with a rather grim work trip to Barcelona, featured a more pleasant but intense trip to the European Parliament in Strasbourg in the middle and ended with a Worldcon planning meeting in London, which I ducked out of for an afternoon to visit my dying aunt in hospital. Here's the Worldcon Committee at work.

I read 33 books that month.

Non-fiction 5 (YTD 40)
A Book of Silence, by Sarah Maitland
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, by Mary Roach
The Girl: A Life in the Shadow of Roman Polanski, by Samantha Geimer
The History of the Hobbit vol 2: Return to Bag-End, by John Rateliff
The Last Mughal, by William Dalrymple

Fiction (non-sf) 3 (YTF 37)
The House of the Seven Gables, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Far Side Of The World, by Patrick O'Brian
The Flood, by Ian Rankin

SF (non-Who) 6 (YTD 55)
The Subtle Knife, by Philip Pullman
Conjure Wife, by Fritz Leiber
Returning My Sister's Face, And Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice, by Eugie Foster
Mortal Clay, Stone Heart and Other Stories in Shades of Black and White, by Eugie Foster
Odd and the Frost Giants, by Neil Gaiman
Equal Rites, by Terry Pratchett

Doctor Who, etc 15 (YTD 62, 73 including non-fiction and comics)
Catastrophea, by Terrance Dicks
Warchild, by Andrew Cartmel
The Slow Empire, by Dave Stone
The Mystery of the Haunted Cottage, by David Landy
Invasion of the Bane, by Terrance Dicks
Revenge of the Slitheen, by Rupert Laight
Eye of the Gorgon, by Phil Ford
Warriors of Kudlak, by Gary Russell
Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?, by Rupert Laight
The Lost Boy, by Gary Russell
The Last Sontaran, by Gary Russell
Day of the Clown, by Phil Ford
The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith, by Gareth Roberts
The Nightmare Man, by Joseph Lidster
Death of the Doctor, by Gary Russell

Comics 4 (YTD 28)
De Sigaren van de Farao [Cigars of the Pharaoh], by Hergé
De Blauwe Lotus [The Blue Lotus] by Hergé
De Zwarte Rotsen [The Black Island], by Hergé
Fables Vol. 17: Inherit the Wind, by Bill Willingham

~6,900 pages (YTD 56,800)
5/33 (YTD 63/224) by women (Geimer, Ropach, Maitland, 2x Foster)
2/33 (YTF 10/224) by PoC (2x Foster)

The best of these was William Dalrymple's The Last Mughal, which you can get here, and the worst Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables, which you can get here.

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Friday reading

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Current
The Book of the War, ed. Lawrence Miles
The Burning God, by R.F. Kuang

Last books finished
The Unspoken Name, by A.K. Larkwood
Blake’s 7 Annual 1982, eds Grahame Robertson and Carole Ramsay
Sweeney Todd & Other Stories, by Neil Gaiman
Not Before Sundown, by Johanna Sinisalo
The Empire of Gold, by S. A Chakraborty – did not finish
The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde
Paul: A Biography, by Tom Wright

Next books
Camouflage, by Joe Haldeman
Mortal Engines, by Philip Reeve

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  • Thu, 17:38: Britain and the Puzzle of European Union, by Andrew Duff https://t.co/mJbmC3JyTn
  • Thu, 18:55: RT @AndrewDuffEU: Old friends. Still puzzled. The quicker the EU gets to be federal, the better it will be for the UK, too. @RoutledgeHist
  • Thu, 20:48: RT @john_lichfield: Non-fish people look away. Here is my reply to a dishonest kettle of fish dumped on Parliament yesterday by the British…
  • Fri, 08:43: RT @Mij_Europe: The UK is going to invoke Article 16. They’ll argue it’s surgical – “it’s only Articles 5 & 7” etc. But EU will (rightly) s…
  • Fri, 10:45: RT @timmckane: If there was real opposition to the Protocol, there would be Anglo Irish Agreement level protests at City Hall. The DUP have…
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Britain and the Puzzle of European Union, by Andrew Duff

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

The climax of such a tempestuous year [1973], in December, was another summit meeting of the Nine in Copenhagen, hijacked by Arab oil ministers. The leaders battled with a heavy agenda of items on which their ministers could not agree: economic and monetary union, the financing of regional development policy, a social policy action plan and energy policy. Copenhagen was the first European Community summit to have been taken over by crisis: there would be many more such meetings, stretching into the early hours of the morning, with exhausted leaders (in Pompidou's case mortally sick) struggling to avoid catastrophe. For British journalists, very few of whom were instinctively sympathetic to the European project, a European summit became synonymous with sleepless crisis management and tortuous textual exegesis.

I have known Andrew Duff since I was a Cambridge undergraduate, and indeed he was my local councillor from my second year until he stood down in 1990, an election in which I myself stood in a neighbouring district and got badly pasted by the voters; he was kind enough to send me a note commiserating on my result but encouraging me to have high ambition for the future. When I started to consider how I might find a job in Brussels in 1998, he was one of the first people I turned to for advice. Ten years later, a casual remark that he made to me over dinner about the inevitability of Brexit was one of the crucial triggers for us as a family to go for Belgian citizenship in 2008.

In the meantime he had been elected to the first two of his three terms in the European Parliament. As a member of the Convention on the Future of Europe, he had got a clause inserted into the EU Treaties allowing the European Parliament to refer a prospective treaty with a third country to the European Court of Justice, and together we tried to get MEPs to activate this in the case of the EU-Morocco Fisheries Agreement in 2011. (We lost that vote, but won a later round.)

We do have our disagreements, but usually on topics where I am conscious that he has given the matter a lot more thought than I have. More on a couple of these below.

As noted above, Andrew saw Brexit coming from a long way off, and prepared accordingly. This short (158-page) book is a summary of his learnings and recommendations. The first two thirds are a very lucid summary of the history of the European Union and of the UK's involvement with it, starting immediately after the Second World War, when neither Labour nor Conservative governments could decide if they wanted to be partners in the new European integration until it was too late to make much difference, and ending with the December 2020 Trade and Cooperation Agreement. He makes a couple of important points about the effect of meeting formats on the results (most notoriously the 2000 Nice summit). The book was finished before the most recent kerfuffle on the Northern Ireland Protocol, but again Andrew saw it coming. For us working on EU affairs, it’s a familiar story, but it’s helpful to have it in this handy format; for those less familiar, I think it’s one of the best short guides out there.

Andrew was a Remainer but is not a Rejoiner, in that he doesn’t see much point in investing emotional or political energy in pursuing a revived British EU membership that isn’t going to happen. (I agree with him.) He also doubts that EU membership is realistic for the Western Balkans, Turkey or Ukraine, and calls for an entrenched associate membership status for those countries that want to join but will not qualify in a meaningful time horizon. I dunno, myself. When I first came to Brussels I was involved with advocating for a similar set of ideas, and a critical problem was that the countries themselves were not very much in favour – and these included Croatia, which has since successfully joined. It’s not at all a bad idea, but the core market will need to be convinced.

On the UK, he is with the liberal mainstream (such as it is) in calling for proportional representation at elections, full federalisation, and preparation for the potential departures of Northern Ireland and Scotland, all of which I have sympathy with; and an elected upper chamber, where I differ. It seems to me that if (if!) you want a revising chamber with largely advisory powers, elections are not a good way of getting the experts who should constitute such a chamber, and it would be better to abolish the seats of the hereditary peers and bishops, slim down the remaining number by 40% (at random if there is no other method) and move firmly to lifetime appointments made by the independent panel which already exists.

And finally, he calls for more European federalism, as he has been doing for most of his career, and for a new understanding between the EU and UK to be found with a strong element of security co-operation, including also the associated status mentioned above. Under current circumstances it’s difficult to see the petulant Lord Frost and vacuous Johnson moving very far on the latter, but they won’t be in power for ever.

Anyway, a good and quick read. You can get it here (at a price).

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Dark Water / Death in Heaven, by Philip Purser-Hallard

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Dark Water is a ghost story, a tale of post-mortem communication and animate skeletons with a horrific conceit at its centre, while Death in Heaven is an elegiac story of mourning and self-sacrifice, and of the heroism of the dead. As these are two halves of a single story, however, elements of both celebrations – which in any case overlap in images of graves and in a heightened concentration on the dead – permeate both episodes.

Fourth in the series of Black Archive books about Doctor Who, old and new, this was published within a year of the first broadcast of the 2014 story that it covers. I didn’t write up the Capaldi era in detail here at the time, but I did watch the programme when it was first shown and again before reading this book. I’m afraid I don’t share his enthusiasm for it; I rank it as one of the comparative failures to end a series properly, with some good points but also some glaring flaws. At the same time, as I said in my last write-up in this sequence, it’s also nice to read a positive account even of something I didn’t particularly enjoy myself.

The central problem I have with the story is its treatment of death. As with Kill the Moon, which tells us that the Moon is actually a space dragon’s egg, though we all know perfectly well that it is a large chunk of rock, Dark Water / Death in Heaven tells us that dead people have become Cybermen under the control of a renegade Time Lord. I find both of these concepts almost offensive in the expected suspension of disbelief on the part of the viewer, and can imagine uncomfortable family conversations as kids asked their parents if that means that people who they knew and loved who have died have also been turned into Cybermen. The casual disposal of Osgood strikes a sour note as well, and I find the dead Brigadier awkward. That’s not really what Doctor Who should be about. Philip Purser-Hallard doesn’t quite tackle this problem, though he does have a chapter on death as we’ll see below.

So, before we get into the book, here are two clips with geographical relevance for me. Death in Heaven includes one of the Whoniverse’s few references to my adopted country, as Missy suggests killing some Belgians; “they’re not even French.”

Also, with relevance to the 2024 Glasgow Worldcon bid, Clara has done her homework while pretending to be the Doctor:

I should add that I’ve been thrilled to meet all three lead actors in this in various times and places:

So, to the analysis by Philip Purser-Hallard. As usual with this series, the book is broken down into discrete chapters each making a particular argument. The chapters deal with:

  • Dark Water / Death in Heaven seen in the context of season finales – as mentioned, Purser-Hallard gives it higher marks than I do; I do agree that it pulls together the narrative strands of the series better than some other finales;
  • the narrative arcs of the main characters in the story, including the Doctor, Clara, Missy, Danny Pink and also Osgood, Kate Stewart and Santa;
  • the significance of the story being broadcast in the week between Halloween and Remembrance Sunday in 2014, dealing as it does with death and commemoration (NB that last Sunday’s episode explicitly called out Halloween);
  • gender-swapping and the Master – worth noting that Kronos and Eldrad in Old Who also swapped gender, and also explores how gender affects the way we read the Master’s relationship with the Doctor – turns out of course to be prophetic for the central character of the show;
  • death, where Purser-Hallard skips over what for me is the central problem of bad taste in the story, and looks instead at the various and contradictory treatments of death in the Whoniverse (including within this story – what happens to dead Osgood? Let alone the Belgians);
  • whether or not the Cybermen are cyberpunk (on balance, not);
  • an appendix on the similarities between the story and Purser-Hallard’s own Faction Paradox novel Of The City of the Saved, which Purser-Hallard modestly says are probably coincidental or else flattering (having since read the entry on the City of the Saved in The Book of the War, it seems to me that they share only the most basic concept and every other detail differs).

Each of these is thoroughly footnoted and well argued, and the book succeeds in making me think a bit more about something I had not really expected to think much more about, and lifts my overall experience of the story (though I’m afraid still leaving it in the negative for me).

So there you go. Next up are Simon Bucher-Jones on Image of the Fendahl, and Jonathan Dennis on Ghost Light.

book cover

The Black Archives
1st Doctor: The Daleks (82) | The Edge of Destruction (67) | Marco Polo (18) | The Aztecs (71) | The Dalek Invasion of Earth (30) | The Romans (32) | The Myth Makers (65) | The Massacre (2) | The Ark (81)
2nd Doctor: The Underwater Menace (40) | The Evil of the Daleks (11) | The Mind Robber (7)
3rd Doctor: Doctor Who and the Silurians (39) | The Ambassadors of Death (3) | The Dæmons (26) | Carnival of Monsters (16) | The Time Warrior (24) | Invasion of the Dinosaurs (55)
4th Doctor: Pyramids of Mars (12) | The Hand of Fear (53) | The Deadly Assassin (45) | The Face of Evil (27) | The Robots of Death (43) | Talons of Weng-Chiang (58) | Horror of Fang Rock (33) | Image of the Fendahl (5) | The Sun Makers (60) | The Stones of Blood (47) | Full Circle (15) | Warriors’ Gate (31) | Logopolis (76)
5th Doctor: Castrovalva (77) | Kinda (62) | Black Orchid (8) | Earthshock (51) | Mawdryn Undead (80) | The Awakening (46)
6th Doctor: Vengeance on Varos (41) | Timelash (35) | The Mysterious Planet (79) | The Ultimate Foe (14)
7th Doctor: Paradise Towers (61) | The Happiness Patrol (68) | Silver Nemesis (75) | The Greatest Show in the Galaxy (66) | Battlefield (34) | The Curse of Fenric (23) | Ghost Light (6)
8th Doctor: The Movie (25) | The Night of the Doctor (49)
Other Doctor: Scream of the Shalka (10)
9th Doctor: Rose (1) | Dalek (54)
10th Doctor: The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit (17) | Love & Monsters (28) | Human Nature / The Family of Blood (13) | The Sound of Drums / Last of the Time Lords (38) | Silence in the Library / The Forest of the Dead (72) | Midnight (69)
11th Doctor: The Eleventh Hour (19) | Vincent and the Doctor (57) | The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang (44) | A Christmas Carol (74) | The Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon (29) | The God Complex (9) | The Rings of Akhaten (42) | Day of the Doctor (50)
12th Doctor: Listen (36) | Kill the Moon (59) | Under the Lake / Before the Flood (73) | The Girl Who Died (64) | Dark Water / Death in Heaven (4) | Face the Raven (20) | Heaven Sent (21) | Hell Bent (22)
13th Doctor: Arachnids in the UK (48) | Kerblam! (37) | The Battle of Ranskoor av Kolos (52) | The Haunting of Villa Diodati (56) | Ascension of the Cybermen / The Timeless Children (70) | Flux (63)
15th Doctor: The Devil’s Chord (78)

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City of Miracles, by Robert Jackson Bennett

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

“Pangyui writes that, in some ancient texts, miracles were described not as rules or devices but as organisms, as if Saint So-and-So’s Magic Feet or whatever they called it was just a fish in a vast sea of them. As if some miracles had minds of their own.”

Third in a trilogy which was up for the Hugo for Best Series in 2018. I enjoyed the first, enjoyed the second and enjoyed this one too. Thirteen years on from the previous volume, a major character gets killed off in the first chapter and then her friend spends the rest of the book scrambling to work out what is going on and then whether he can prevent the End Of The World. There is a particularly vivid sequence of a fight on a super-ski lift, which would make an excellent film in itself. Very often books with magic annoy me when the sorcery is just enough to take the plot forward; I felt that Bennett plays it fair here and that the characters had little more information than the readers about what was going on – which goes for the whole trilogy really. Warmly recommended, and hope to see more from this writer. You can get it here.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2018. Next on that pile is The Idiot Brain: A Neuroscientist Explains What Your Head is Really Up To, by Dean Burnett.

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  • Tue, 10:18: RT @alexstubb: And now saga finished. Did another 5 minutes. Cost of purchase 100 euros. Cost additional cost (VAT and customs, I assume) a…
  • Tue, 10:45: RT @alexstubb: Perhaps a slightly dramatic heading, but a good read. Yes, France and the UK need to calm down a bit. No one wins in this wo…

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The Empire of Time, by David Wingrove, and Crashland, by Sean Williams

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Second paragraph of third chapter of The Empire of Time:

Young Urte is there, and Karen, Helge – eight months pregnant by the look of her – and Brigitte, herself in the first stages of pregnancy. And Bella, and Lili and …

Second paragraph of third chapter of Crashland:

‘Yes, by a dupe outside the safe house in Sacramento Bay. We don't have a body, but his blood was found at the scene, plus other evidence strongly suggesting that what you say is true.’

These were the last two books on my shelves acquired in 2014. Sometimes there is a reason why you don't get around to reading a book, and in both these cases I failed utterly to engage with the first fifty pages, and decided that I could not be bothered to take them further. In brief, The Empire of Time seems to have very confused plotting, and Crashland is the sequel to a book I haven't read and annoyed me with an exposition scene where detectives tell a suspect what has been going on. So I put them both aside, and that's the end of my 2014 books.

For comparison, I finished my last book acquired in 2013 exactly a year agothe last from 2012 18 months ago, the last from 2011 just over two years ago, the last from 2010 in just under three years ago, and the last book acquired in 2009 five years ago. I now have about 50 unread books acquired in 2015, and will try to get through them in less than a year. First up will be:

  • Splinters and the Impolite President, by William Whyte – first acquired non-genre (though turns out it is in fact fantasy);
  • Discipline or Corruption, by Konstantin Stanislavsky and others – first acquired non-fiction (though frankly it too turns out to have elements of fantasy);
  • Free Speeches, by Denis Kitchen, Nadine Strossen, Dave Sim, Neil Gaiman and Frank Miller – shortest book from 2015;
  • Shadowboxer, by Tricia Sullivan – first acquired SF; and
  • Day of the Dead, by Neil Gaiman – most popular book from 2015.

I have already read all of these at time of publishing this post, and am queuing up the reviews.

You can get The Empire of Time here, and Crashland here.

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The stucco ceilings of Jan-Christian Hansche part 2: More stucco ceilings at the Château de Modave

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Today being a public holiday, I successfully persuaded the family to go for a trip to the lower Ardennes, specifically to the château at Modave, the far side of Huy, just where the landscape starts to get interesting. My reason for this goes back to the summer, when I was wowed by the stucco ceilings inside the Park Abbey near Leuven, created by the 17th century artist Jan-Christian Hansche. There are a couple of castles in the Brussels area which also have some of his work (Beaulieu near Machelen and Horst on the other side of Leuven) but neither is open to the public. Modave, however, is.

I was not disappointed. Hansche’s ceilings there are spectacular. The entrance hall features a family tree of the original owner, with mounted knights leaning down out of history and into our space.

These are the only Hansche stuccos that I have seen that were painted.

A neighbouring suite has the theme of the Labours of Hercules – see below the taming of the man-eating mares of Diomedes, the slaying of the nine-headed Hydra and (less distinctly as I could not get a clear shot) the cattle dispute with the three-headed Geryon.

Inset into the walls are some more stuccos, a bit more rounded due to gravity providing a lesser challenge.

Upstairs is another suite where the ceilings have a more military theme – I got only two good pics, but I am very pleased with the cannon pointing out of the ceiling.

I really don’t know of any other artist who did three-dimensional ceiling work like this, from any period of history. So I will set myself a mini-project of finding all of his surviving work. The castles of Beaulieu and Horst do open sometimes, and there are other pieces in places like Ghent.

Modave has other art too, including these lovely panels:

Some striking tapestries:

And grand mural scenes of Rome:

The light was such that I needed an Instagram filter for the view of the front of the castle:

And U was dubious about a sunlit selfie:

Apart from that, she seemed to enjoy it, as did the others.

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October 2021 books

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Non-fiction 8 (YTD 38)
John Quincy Adams: American Visionary, by Fred Kaplan
Groetjes uit Vlaanderen, by Mohamed Ouaamari
The Ambassadors of Death, by L.M. Myles
Dark Water / Death in Heaven, by Philip Purser-Hallard
Free Speeches, by Denis Kitchen, Nadine Strossen, Dave Sim, Neil Gaiman and Frank Miller
The Ryans of Inch and Their World: A Catholic Gentry Family from Dispossession to Integration, c.1650-1831, by Richard John Fitzpatrick (PhD thesis)
Those About to Die, by Daniel P. Mannix
Discipline or Corruption, by Konstantin Stanislavsky

John Quincy Adams cover Groetjes uit Vlaanderen cover Ambassadors of Death cover Dark Water / Death in Heaven cover Free Speeches cover Those About to Die cover Discipline or Corruption cover

Non-genre 2 (YTD 24)
The Wych Elm, by Tana French
Time Must Have a Stop, by Aldous Huxley
Wych Elm cover Time Must Have a Stop cover

Scripts 1 (YTD 4)
Day of the Dead, by Neil Gaiman
Day of the Dead cover

SF 15 (YTD 109)
Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson
"Fire Watch", by Connie Willis
Little Free Library, by Naomi Kritzer
The Empire of Time, by David Wingrove – did not finish
Crashland, by Sean Williams – did not finish
City of Miracles, by Robert Jackson Bennett
Silver in the Wood, by Emily Tesh
The Space Between Worlds, by Micaiah Johnson
Splinters and the Impolite President, by William Whyte
Axiom's End, by Lindsay Ellis
Splinters and the Wolves of Winter, by William Whyte
Shadowboxer, by Tricia Sullivan
The Vanished Birds, by Simon Jimenez
The Unspoken Name, by A.K. Larkwood
Blake’s 7 Annual 1982, eds Grahame Robertson and Carole Ramsay
41wcwtI+eNL[1].jpg Fire Watch cover Little Free Library cover Empire of Time cover Crashland cover City of Miracles cover Silver in the Wood cover Space Between Worlds cover Splinters and the Impolite President cover Axiom Splinters and the Wolves of Winter cover Shadowboxer cover The Vanished Birds cover The Unspoken Name cover B7 1982 cover

Doctor Who 5 (YTD 18, 24 inc comics and non-fiction)
Prime Imperative, by Julianne Todd
The Xmas Files, ed. Shaun Russell
Mind of Stone, by Iain McLaughlin
The Crimson Horror, by Mark Gatiss
Doctor Who: The Ambassadors of Death, by Terrance Dicks
Prime Imperative cover Xmas Files cover Mind of Stone cover Crimson Horror cover Ambassadors of Death cover

7,600 pages (YTD 60,600)
13/31 (YTD 99/231) by non-male writers (Myles, Strossen, Darl/Cooper/Harris/Harris, French, Willis, Kritzer, Tesh, Johnson, Ellis, Sullivan, Larkwood, Ramsay, Todd)
3/31 (YTD 37/231) by PoC (Ouaamari, Johnson, Jimenez)
3/31 rereads (YTD 26/231) – Quicksilver, "Fire Watch", Dicks Ambassadors of Death.

Current
Not Before Sundown, by Johanna Sinisalo
The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde
Paul: A Biography, by Tom Wright
The Empire of Gold, by S. A Chakraborty

Coming soon (perhaps)
Summer, by Ali Smith
Mortal Engines, by Philip Reeve
The Story of Sex: From Apes to Robots, by Philippe Brenot
Waste Tide, by Qiufan Chen
The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun, by J R R Tolkien
Sweeney Todd & Other Stories, by Neil Gaiman
The Ice Cream Army, by Jessica Gregson
Exploding School to Pieces: Growing Up With Pop Culture In the 1970s, by Mick Deal
Shanghai Sparrow, by Gaie Sebold
The Last Witness, by K. J. Parker
The Last Defender of Camelot, by Roger Zelazny
Le dernier Atlas, Tome 3, by Fabien Vehlmann
Ann Veronica, by H. G. Wells
"Blood Music", by Greg Bear
An Introduction to the Gospel of John, by Raymond E. Brown
The Idiot Brain: A Neuroscientist Explains What Your Head is Really Up To, by Dean Burnett
Beautiful World, Where Are You, by Sally Rooney
Camouflage, by Joe Haldeman
The 48 Laws Of Power, by Robert Greene
The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury

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September 2013 books

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This is the latest post in a series I started in late 2019, anticipating the twentieth anniversary of my bookblogging which will fall in 2023. Every six-ish days, I've been revisiting a month from my recent past, noting work and family developments as well as the books I read in that month. I've found it a pleasantly cathartic process, especially in recent circumstances. If you want to look back at previous entries, they are all tagged under bookblog nostalgia.

At work, Anglo-American M left my office and moved in with a nice Bulgarian chap D, who I had actually introduced her to one evening in July. They are now married with a little girl, and currently in Bulgaria where D is running in the election next month. M's replacement was Swedish/German L.

I had a fair bit of travel in September 2013: to Berlin, for reasons I cannot now remember, to Poland for the first time for a conference in Krynica-Zdrój, where I bonded a bit with Pete Wishart, and to Dublin for a one-day mission. But the biggest work development was that I found myself rather oddly representing Somaliland at the big Brussels conference on Somalia, after the government representatives of Somaliland pulled out at the last moment. Since I wasn't allowed inside the hall, this mainly meant hanging around in the atrium of the Egmont Palace looking for people to talk to, though there was one exciting moment when I found myself (successfully) lobbying the Italian foreign minister (who I knew) about the final communique.

The Northern Ireland representation in Brussels had a fantastic culture night, with this amazing piper (whose name I have sadly forgotten), followed by the head of the office performing.

We also had the Oud-Heverlee Zomerfeest.

And Loncon II became the seated Worldcon, with this fantastic handover video, which I don't think has been excelled:

I read 19 books that month.

Non-fiction 4 (YTD 35)
Clean: An Unsanitised History of Washing, by Katherine Ashenburg
The Theology of the Gospel of Mark, by W.R. Telford
Who and Me, by Barry Letts
Strengths Finder 2.0, by Tom Rath

Poetry 1
Meeting the British, by Paul Muldoon

Fiction (non-sf) 4 (YTD 34)
The Body In The Library, by Agatha Christie
A Murder Is Announced, by Agatha Christie
Evil under the Sun, by Agatha Christie
Home Truths, by Freya North

SF (non-Who) 3 (YTD 49)
Royal Assassin, by Robin Hobb
The Queen's Bastard, by C.E. Murphy
The Moment of Eclipse, by Brian W. Aldiss

Doctor Who 5 (YTD 47, 58 including non-fiction and comics)
The Suns of Caresh, by Paul Saint
Just War, by Lance Parkin
The Year of Intelligent Tigers, by Kate Orman
The Beast of Babylon, by Charlie Higson
Shroud of Sorrow, by Tommy Donbavand

Comics 2 (YTD 24)
The Books of Magic, by Neil Gaiman
The Castafiore Emerald, by Hergé

~5,200 pages (YTD 49,900)
7/19 (YTD 58/191) by women (3xChristie, North, Hobb, Murphy, Orman)
0/19 (YTD 8/191) by PoC

The best of these, though a reread, was The Moment of Eclipse, by Brian Aldiss; you can get it here. I enjoyed almost all the rest, especially poetry collection Meeting the British, by Paul Muldoon, which you can get here, and chick-lit novel Home Truths, by Freya North, which you can get here – fourth in a series where I had not read the other three, but very accessible to a new reader. Was very unimpressed by the Agatha Christie Evil Under the Sun, which you can get here.

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Parlement, the 2020 TV series

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Somewhat late to the party, we've been watching the first series of Parlement, a comedy set in and around the European Parliament. Here's a trailer:

It is the story of Samy (Xavier Lacaille), a naive young French chap, who comes to Brussels in early 2019 to work for Michel Specklin (Philippe Duquesne), a French MEP who has been successfully practicing invisibility for years, and is appalled when Samy lands him with responsibility for fisheries legislation banning shark finning. British parliamentary staffer Rose (Liz Kingsman) steals every scene she is in. Here she and German staffer Torsten (Lucas Englander) put Samy right about the nice Swedish girl (Elvira Tröger) who he has just met.

Here is Samy's disastrous attempt to get his boss to role-play a confrontation with their group's adviser, the sinister Maurice:

Meanwhile Rose's Brexity boss (Jane Turner) is trying to solve the Irish border issue (this was still 2019). My friend Jennifer makes a cameo appearance as the reporter at the end.

Here's the opening of the ninth episode, which catches the surrealism of the Strasbourg buildings:

It's a sitcom, but it's rooted in reality. My own most vigorous lobbying of the European Parliament in my almost 23 years in Brussels was also on a fisheries issue, and I winced with recognition at several of the scenes, to the point where I wondered if the writers had been standing behind me taking notes back in 2011. The most egregious variation from real life that I noted was the lobbyist who argues for one side of the issue in an early episode and for the other side in a later episode – not because this never happens, but because Samy and his friends find out by consulting the Transparency Register, which is not usually updated in real time. I would add that the European Parliament staff in the show are more ethnically diverse and less Eastern European than in real life. But speaking of real life, Pascal Lamy, a fomer European Commissioner (and Director-General of the World Trade Organization) turns up a couple of times playing himself.

I have no idea how one could get hold of it in other countries, but it's well worth hunting down. Apparently there is now a second series as well. Also Liz Kingsman is doing a one-woman show in London these days, and if I can possibly catch it I will do so.

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The Ambassadors of Death, by L.M. Myles (and Terrance Dicks)

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The third of the Black Archive books is by L.M. Myles, who I last saw at the fantastic Gallifrey One convention last year. Here she is in the bar on the first night, in the thick of things.

When I first watched The Ambassadors of Death in 2007, I wrote:

Jon Pertwee’s first season in 1970 was certainly his best, but also in a lot of ways quite unlike any other season before or since. The Ambassadors of Death is Who as James Bond-ish adventure story with lots and lots of shootouts and fighting, and aliens who can kill at a touch. I thought Caroline John as Liz Shaw was particularly good here, though she does scream once or twice. Not quite sure what the point of the time experimentation at the beginning was. The plot was exceptionally convoluted in order to cover the seven episodes, and I felt the camera lingered on guest star Ronald Allen for longer than the quality of his acting really deserved (some of the other recurring actors, eg John Abineri and Michael Wisher, were rather better I thought), but altogether it is pretty compelling. It’s quite uncomfortable and spiky in places; the congealing of the UNIT “family” in the next season made for a much safer and basically less exciting programme.

When I rewatched it in 2010, I wrote:

was eager to hear my views of The Ambassadors of Death, and I guess the first point is how little of the story is actually about the eponymous aliens. The first five episodes focus on UNIT trying to battle bad guys who have stolen an alien weapon and are using it for crime, and have also infiltrated UNIT’s own chain of command; each episode has a mandatory action sequence pitting good guys vs thugs. Only in ep 6 does the Doctor transmigrate to the alien spaceship where astronauts are in an altered state of consciousness, which could be symbolic of something. We take a long time to get close to the action; it’s actually rather reminiscent of The Invasion, with seedier human opponents and less willing aliens.

John Abineri does put in a good turn as Carrington – even if his means and motivation are not well explained, he is conveys the deceptively psychotic general rather well. I am, however, mystified and distracted by the cameras’ concentration on Ronald Allen as Cornish; perhaps the director was obsessed by Allen’s good looks. Come to that, I am still a little mystified as to what the story was really about. Nice to see Michael Wisher for the first time. Dudley Simpson, always reliable, utterly excels here with a Jethro Tull-like soundtrack which conveys a slightly weird yet rather English atmosphere.

Rewatching it again I appreciated all of these points, especially the Dudley Simpson soundtrack.

I still found myself baffled by the plot, and the means and motivation of the bad guys, but it’s not the only Who story of which that is the case.

I also noticed that there are practically no women in the story apart from Liz; there are two credited actresses, Cheryl Molineaux (for whom this is her final credit on IMDB, after a career that had started with the lead role in a 1961 children’s series call The Skewbald) who plays Ralph Cornish’s assistant Miss Rutherford in the first two episodes, and Joanna Ross, for whom this is the first role of a brief career, who plays an identical but quieter role in the last three episodes. (Maybe Cheryl Molineaux didn’t want to come back?)

Here’s a fan attempt to make a trailer for the story – rather impressive.

The second paragraph of the third chapter of the novelisation is:

One, clearly the senior in both age and rank, was a sparely-built middle-aged man with short hair, a neatly trimmed moustache and the kind of expensive Savile Row suit that is almost a uniform in itself. He wore a red carnation in his buttonhole. His name was Carrington.

When I first read it in 2008, I wrote:

This is not particularly good. We lose out on the action scenes which were one of the original story’s strong points (along with generally good direction), and Dicks adds little new to the plot (having said which, see below for a point on a minor character) which basically exposes its weaknesses rather more mercilessly to the reader. Published in 1987, this was the last of the televised Third Doctor stories to reach print (wording chosen carefully to allow for Barry Letts’ novels based on his two audio dramas).

…we are told that Reegan (as played by William Dysart)

had been born in Ireland, though he had spent much of his life in America and other parts of the world, frequently on the run from the law. He had begun his criminal career robbing banks for the IRA, and had left Ireland in danger of his life when it had been discovered that he was keeping more of the proceeds for himself than he was donating to the Cause.

More recent events notwithstanding, Reegan’s history sounds more like Odd Man Out than anything else; Dicks celebrates his 73rd birthday this coming weekend, so would have been twelve when Odd Man Out was first released. England seems an odd choice of refuge for a former IRA bank robber to flee to.

I think I was a little harsh. Squeezing seven episodes into a Target novelisation is a considerable challenge which the late great Terrance Dicks managed effortlessly, and he also gives us brief introductory characterisation paragraphs for all of the significant characters. It’s still not my favourite novelisation, not even of Season 7 (Cave Monsters for the win!) but I should have been fairer. You can get it here (for a price).

And as for the ambiguity of Reegan, who would have predicted that a former IRA hunger striker would declare in court in 2012 that he was a British citizen and therefore should not be subject to Irish jurisdiction?

The second paragraph of the third chapter of L.M. Myles’ monograph on the story is (with footnote):

The dynamic is set up quite succinctly in the first half of episode one, when the Doctor watches the television broadcast of the Recovery 7 mission. ‘And the Brigadier thinks it’s his business,’ he says, waspishly, after spotting the military presence in mission control. ‘I suppose he’s got to do something to occupy his mind now that he’s blown up the Silurians.’ The Doctor’s rudeness might extend to the Brigadier, but the Brigadier, being fully aware of the Doctor’s brilliance and how he’s brought it to bear against alien attacks on the Earth, has considerably more patience for the Doctor’s snark than any other human. And the will to intercede on his behalf, to press him towards politeness, and to ask others for patience with his tetchy colleague. Importantly, the Doctor is prepared to listen to the Brigadier on these points: when he takes the Doctor aside after he barges into Space Centre, and reminds him that there is a hierarchy here, and that Cornish is in charge, the Doctor calms down instantly, and takes the point. This Doctor, more than any other, is aware of human hierarchies, having been forced to live within them for an extended, continuous “amount of time. At the Brigadier’s urging, he attempts politeness and persuasiveness, arguing that the message must be decoded for the safety of the astronauts, who are Cornish’s primary concern. ‘I suppose we must try everything,’ says Cornish, conceding both to practicality – whatever they can do to help the astronauts, they must – and the Doctor’s argument, whilst subtly, and so Britishly, rebuking the Doctor for his rudeness2.
2 Episode one.

Again, it’s not my favourite story, but Myles successfully persuades me that there is quite a lot going on here, with chapters on:

  • the opening titles, which have a unique-for-Old-Who pre-title sequence and a musical sting for the words “OF DEATH”;
  • the triple Doctor/Brigadier/Liz dynamic;
  • the Doctor/Brigadier relationship;
  • the Doctor/Liz relationship;
  • the villainy or not of the three main guest characters, Reegan, Cornish and Carrington;
  • the fact that there are no women apart from Liz;
  • the problem of UNIT;
  • fictional and real British space programmes;
  • class divisions, especially Sir James Quinlan;
  • the problem of the Ambassadors themselves;
  • the problem of the absent TARDIS (though actually this does explain for me the silly time-travel bit in the first episode);
  • the CSO special effects;
  • the genre shading into spy adventure and crime-fighting;
  • a note on Quatermass;
  • a conclusion. “Ambassadors has been my favourite of season seven since I first watched it, and putting it under such close scrutiny has only increased my admiration and love for it. It’s a complicated, nuanced story that explores humanity’s conflicted, messy reactions to the unknown, and comes down firmly on the side of patience, knowledge, curiosity and trust.”

As is probably clear, I don’t go all the way with Myles on this – the internal inconsistencies annoy me too much – but it’s still nice to read someone else’s appreciation, even for something I don’t like as much as she does. You can get it here.

The Black Archives
1st Doctor: The Daleks (82) | The Edge of Destruction (67) | Marco Polo (18) | The Aztecs (71) | The Dalek Invasion of Earth (30) | The Romans (32) | The Myth Makers (65) | The Massacre (2) | The Ark (81)
2nd Doctor: The Underwater Menace (40) | The Evil of the Daleks (11) | The Mind Robber (7)
3rd Doctor: Doctor Who and the Silurians (39) | The Ambassadors of Death (3) | The Dæmons (26) | Carnival of Monsters (16) | The Time Warrior (24) | Invasion of the Dinosaurs (55)
4th Doctor: Pyramids of Mars (12) | The Hand of Fear (53) | The Deadly Assassin (45) | The Face of Evil (27) | The Robots of Death (43) | Talons of Weng-Chiang (58) | Horror of Fang Rock (33) | Image of the Fendahl (5) | The Sun Makers (60) | The Stones of Blood (47) | Full Circle (15) | Warriors’ Gate (31) | Logopolis (76)
5th Doctor: Castrovalva (77) | Kinda (62) | Black Orchid (8) | Earthshock (51) | Mawdryn Undead (80) | The Awakening (46)
6th Doctor: Vengeance on Varos (41) | Timelash (35) | The Mysterious Planet (79) | The Ultimate Foe (14)
7th Doctor: Paradise Towers (61) | The Happiness Patrol (68) | Silver Nemesis (75) | The Greatest Show in the Galaxy (66) | Battlefield (34) | The Curse of Fenric (23) | Ghost Light (6)
8th Doctor: The Movie (25) | The Night of the Doctor (49)
Other Doctor: Scream of the Shalka (10)
9th Doctor: Rose (1) | Dalek (54)
10th Doctor: The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit (17) | Love & Monsters (28) | Human Nature / The Family of Blood (13) | The Sound of Drums / Last of the Time Lords (38) | Silence in the Library / The Forest of the Dead (72) | Midnight (69)
11th Doctor: The Eleventh Hour (19) | Vincent and the Doctor (57) | The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang (44) | A Christmas Carol (74) | The Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon (29) | The God Complex (9) | The Rings of Akhaten (42) | Day of the Doctor (50)
12th Doctor: Listen (36) | Kill the Moon (59) | Under the Lake / Before the Flood (73) | The Girl Who Died (64) | Dark Water / Death in Heaven (4) | Face the Raven (20) | Heaven Sent (21) | Hell Bent (22)
13th Doctor: Arachnids in the UK (48) | Kerblam! (37) | The Battle of Ranskoor av Kolos (52) | The Haunting of Villa Diodati (56) | Ascension of the Cybermen / The Timeless Children (70) | Flux (63)
15th Doctor: The Devil’s Chord (78)

Friday reading

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Current
Not Before Sundown, by Johanna Sinisalo
The Unspoken Name, by A.K. Larkwood
The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde
Paul: A Biography, by Tom Wright

Last books finished
Splinters and the Wolves of Winter, by William Whyte
Those About to Die, by Daniel P. Mannix
Day of the Dead, by Neil Gaiman
Discipline or Corruption, by Konstantin Stanislavsky
Shadowboxer, by Tricia Sullivan
The Vanished Birds, by Simon Jimenez

Next books
Mortal Engines, by Philip Reeve
The Story of Sex: From Apes to Robots, by Philippe Brenot

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590 days of plague

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Holding.

Edited to add: Well, that’s embarrassing. I had carefully planned out my day so that I would do an astute update here to go live later in the evening, but in fact my “holding” entry went live when I was still in the office.

It was a very annoying day, coming at the end of a lovely visit from my sister C and her daughter S. We totally failed to take any pictures with C in them, which is a shame as it was her birthday on Monday and we went out for dinner on Sunday.

Further edit: F did get a picture of the birthday girl.

We also went to visit B.

And took U for a walk in the woods.

This morning I had decided to work from home as C was leaving for the Glasgow climate conference and Anne was also heading off to England for two nights for a funeral; but at 9.30, in the middle of a vital call with a colleague, the internet disappeared from our house and refused to come back. So I went into the office mid-morning, having basically lost two hours of the working day which I am still striving to make up this evening.

(On top of that, someone decided to pick a fight with me on Facebook about Handel’s Naturalisation Act of 1727. We live in a strange world.)

Anyway. The surge in the Belgian COVID numbers that I noted last time has broken out into a full-blown fourth wave of COVID infections. But in Belgium at least, more than half of the new cases are among school-age children who have not been vaccinated, so the impact on those of us whose work does not involve school-age children has been much lower. For comparison:

Today’s reported daily average infection rate is 5691, 75% up from a week ago. This is higher than the third wave (April 2021) peak of 4827. In November 2020 I missed the numbers on the 15th, but the reported weekly infection rate on 14 November was 6213 and on 16 November 5246, so 15 November must have been about equivalent to today.

On 16 November the numbers in hospital were 6504. Now it’s 1379.
Also on 16 November the ICU occupancy was 1423. Now it’s 255.
Also on 16 November the weekly reported death rate was 202, the peak of the second wave. Now it’s 15.

Yes, you may say, but that’s while the second wave peak was declining. What about on the way up?

Well, I have those numbers too, from a year and twelve days ago.

On 16 October 2020, the reported daily average infection rate was 5976, a new record and 96% up on the previous week.
The hospital numbers then were 1949, 41% more than now.
The ICU numbers were 327, 28% more than now.
The death rate was 23, 50% more than now.

There was still some time to go before the second wave peaked – 15967 daily infections, reported 1 November (so more than 1% of Belgium’s population had tested positive for COVID in that reporting period); 7485 in hospital, reported 4 November; 1474 in ICU’s, reported 10 November; and 202 fatalities, reported 16 November as noted above. For what it’s worth, I think the fourth wave will peak way below the second, though it has already beaten the first and third, and that the hospitalisation, ICU and fatality numbers will be correspondingly lower.

It’s still not good, but we seem to be adapting to a new normal.

Talk to you again soon.

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Groetjes uit Vlaanderen, by Mohamed Ouaamari

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Second paragraph of third chapter (Sura 114 of the Qur'an, in Dutch in the book but I'm giving both the Arabic original – the Warsh recitation, which is used in Morocco – and the English translation):

Zeg: ‘Ik zoek bescherming bij de Heer van de mensen. De Koning van de mensen. De God van de mensen. Tegen het kwaad van de wegsluipende influisteraar (Satan). Degene die in de harten van de mensen fluistert. Van de djinn en de mensen.’ قُلْ أَعُوذُ بِرَبِّ النَّاسِ مَلِكِ النَّاسِ إِلَهِ النَّاسِ مِن شَرِّ الْوَسْوَاسِ الْخَنَّاسِ الَّذِي يُوَسْوِسُ فِي صُدُورِ النَّاسِ مِنَ الْجِنَّةِ وَ النَّاسِ     Say, "I seek refuge in the Lord of mankind. The King of mankind. The God of mankind. From the evil of the retreating whisperer (Satan). He who whispers into the breasts of mankind. From among the jinn and mankind."

Interesting autobiography of a Flemish writer and commentator with Moroccan roots; he tells the story of growing up between two worlds – decaying Antwerp suburbs and the Moroccan Rif – and the prejudices he faces at both ends, though more particularly at the Belgian end. And yet he identifies as Flemish before anything else, within a lasagne-like set of layers of identities, even when many of his fellow Flemings vote for parties that reject him and his people (there's a grim tale of being singled out as a ten-year-old Muslim by his schoolteacher in class after 9/11). He gives a particularly funny-not-funny account of being arrested at a business conference for making a joke on Twitter that, er, went down badly with the police. A really interesting account from a Belgian who like my own children has parents born outside the country, and has faced rather different challenges to our family. I hope it gets translated into French and English, though some of the humour is a bit Dutch-specific. (How can you translate "bakfietsvlamingen"???) Recommended for those who have the language. You can get it here.

This was the top unread book by a non-white writer on my pile. Next is Waste Tide, by Chen Qiufan,

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2021 Hugo short stories

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6) “A Guide for Working Breeds”, Vina Jie-Min Prasad. Opening dialogue in third section:

Kleekai Greyhound (K.g1-09030)
hey mentor figure! guess what?

Constant Killer (C.k2-00452)
You have a new display name?

Sorry, this is a story with cute doglike killer robots, and I can't stand stories about cute robots. It's not you, it's me.

5) “Badass Moms in the Zombie Apocalypse”, Rae Carson. Second paragraph of third section:

The second thing I do is gather Marisol and our baby and take them to the infirmary to see Eileen.

Sorry again, it's a zombie apocalypse story, and they don't do anything for me, even with added insightful interrogations of gender roles and motherhood.

I liked all the rest.

4) “Open House on Haunted Hill”, John Wiswell. Second paragraph of third section:

The afternoon is sluggish. There are four more visitors, none of whom stay long enough to check the basement for treasure. The hours chug by, and Mrs. Weiss spends most of the time on her phone.

Lovely story about a haunted house that just wants to be happy and have a family living in it comfortably. Veers towards horror but not very horribly. Will probably win.

3) “Metal Like Blood in the Dark”, T. Kingfisher. Second paragraph of third section:

“You have eaten my ship,” said their captor. “I have spent five thousand years here, building it up, and you have eaten it. It will take me another five thousand to repair it. What say you?”

A story with AIs which are definitely not cute at all, but grappling with an unfair universe and concepts of truth and falsehood. Memorably done.

2) “The Mermaid Astronaut”, Yoon Ha Lee. Second paragraph of third section:

But Kiovasa could only think of how she was going to lose her sister, and Essarala felt the weight of the witch’s shell knife, carried in a pouch of gold-washed chainmail, as though it would drown her.

Fantastic evocation of colonialism, body dysphoria and the differential passage of time, in dialogue with Ursula Le Guin.

1) Little Free Library, Naomi Kritzer. Second paragraph of third section:

She could see the Little Free Library from her living room window, and watched the first day as some of the neighborhood kids stopped to peer in. When she checked that afternoon, she noticed that Ender’s Game, Dragonsinger, and Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine had all been taken. The next day, someone had left a copy of The Da Vinci Code, which made her grimace, but hey, there were people who adored that book, so why not. She put in her extra copy of Fellowship of the Ring along with two Terry Pratchett books.

I don’t know about you, but we have two little free libraries within a stone’s throw of our house. But what if they really were gateways to another world, as we always like to say that books can be? Short but very effective, and gets my vote.

2021 Hugos: Best Novel | Best Novella | Best Novelette | Best Short Story | Best Series | Best Related Work | Best Graphic Story or Comic | Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form | Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form | Best Professional Artist and Best Fan Artist | Lodestar | Astounding

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The Crimson Horror, by Mark Gatiss

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

He came in through the porch, wreathed in smiles, his bony hands knotted together and his eyes darting all around. ‘Ooh, yes. Lovely! Smashing dado. You’ve got this place very nice, I must say.’ He glanced at the various stuffed animal heads that lined the hallway. Relics of the previous owner, a Colonel of Dragoons, who had shot every living thing he could set his rheumy old eyes on. There was an empty space on the wall – above a lioness and adjacent to a warthog – and the Doctor wondered what might go there.

Novelisation of Gatiss's Eleventh Doctor TV story The Crimson Horror, the one set in a nineteenth-century Yorkshire factory with guest stars Diana Rigg and her daughter Rachael Stirling. I really liked it. There is a lot more setup – we reach the first scene of the TV story on page 67 of a 178-page book!!! – which really helps to immerse us in the steampunk / Victorian industrial grunge aesthetic; and then the script itself is largely kept, but massaged for better pacing and to reduce the reader's reliance on visuals that we can't see on the page. As well as appearing a couple of times on screen, Mark Gatiss has written several good Doctor Who books, and this is another of them.

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2021 Hugo novelettes

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Before I get started, I just want to say that these are all really good. Some years it feels like the novelette is the ideal range for speculative fiction, and this is one of those years. I wish that all of these could win.

6) “Burn, or the Episodic Life of Sam Wells as a Super”, A.T. Greenblatt. Second paragraph of third section:

At least that’s what he keeps telling himself. His new office is really quite large and nice. Or would be if the floor wasn’t smothered by boxes and files. Or if the whole set up didn’t look like it never met a computer and didn’t reek of dust and disuse. Or if the office wasn’t in the basement 9 of the old community center.

Alas, we have to start pruning somewhere, and superhero stories aren't as much my thing as they are for some people. This is a good look at the superhero who is marginalised in a society where they are generally not all that respected and where his super power isn't actually all that useful. Nicely done.

5) “Monster”, Naomi Kritzer. Second paragraph of third section:

Everything around me looks quaint and old, but in fact it was built from scratch just a few years ago to showcase local ethnic cultures and attract tourists to the area. Local people are employed to wear traditional costumes, walk the street playing traditional instruments, make and sell traditional crafts. It reminds me of a Renaissance festival.

A somewhat grim tale of a woman who tracks her only friend from a bullying high school down to China where he is engaging in genetic manipulation. Vividly envisaged.

4) “The Pill”, Meg Elison. Third paragraph (doesn't seem to have sections):

Third para: She [the narrator's mother] did them all: the digital calorie monitors that she wore on her wrists and ankles for six straight weeks. (I rolled my eyes at that one, but at least she didn’t talk about it constantly.) The strings like clear licorice made of some kind of supercellulose that were supposed to accumulate in her stomach lining and give her a no-surgery stomach stapling but just made her (and everyone else who didn’t eat a placebo) fantastically constipated. (Unstoppable complaining about this one; I couldn’t bring anyone home for weeks for fear that she’d abruptly start telling my friends about her struggle to shit.) Pill after pill after pill that gave her heart palpitations, made her hair fall out, or (on one memorable occasion) induced psychotic delusions. If it was a way out of being fat, she’d try it. She’d try anything.

Challenging story about body image – what if there was a widely available pill that eliminates obesity? What does that do to society, and to those who don't want to take it? The icky ending is depressing but entirely plausible.

3) Two Truths and a Lie, Sarah Pinsker. Second paragraph of third section:

She headed out to Denny’s house. She paused on the step, realizing she was in nicer clothes this time. Hopefully she wouldn’t be there long.

A good spooky story about childhood memories of a creepy local TV presenter which turns into fighting off an otherworldly menace. A little closer to horror than I usually like, but very memorable.

2) “The Inaccessibility of Heaven”, Aliette de Bodard. Second paragraph of third section:

For a moment, as I started the computer and checked the accounts for the day, I contemplated calling Cal’s mobile—but it was a foolish idea, dismissed as soon as it occurred to me. She wouldn’t want to talk to me in any case.

A whodunnit with fallen angels. I like Aliette, I don't always get on with her prose, but this worked very well for me, nicely structured and paced with believable characters in a credibly portrayed situation. has already won the Ignyte Award.

1) “Helicopter Story”, Isabel Fall. Second paragraph of third section:

We are here to degrade and destroy strategic targets in the United States of America’s war against the Pear Mesa Budget Committee. If you disagree with the war, so be it: I ask your empathy, not your sympathy. Save your pity for the poor legislators who had to find some constitutional framework for declaring war against a credit union.

This story of course controversially was withdrawn after publication, due to a horrific online mobbing of the writer and the story. That whole saga has been written up in detail hereBest Novel | Best Novella | Best Novelette | Best Short Story | Best Series | Best Related Work | Best Graphic Story or Comic | Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form | Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form | Best Professional Artist and Best Fan Artist | Lodestar | Astounding

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